Killzone 3 (Review)

PlayStation 3
Bad to the Bone
By Neal "NeoMahi" Evans 
Published: Sony Computer Entertainment      Developed: Guerrilla Games 

Ask anyone who knows me and they'll all tell you the same thing. That I'm extremely particular about First-Person Shooters and to get me to play one is practically impossible and its true. With me, the game has to have something pretty unique about it to get me to pick it up. An example of this might be "Condemned: Criminal Origins" developed by Monolith exclusively for the Xbox 360 and a stellar launch title that was soon followed up by 'Condemned 2: Bloodshot' for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 and a game I feel was totally under appreciated that Sega had so happened to have stumbled upon. I wasn't a fan of 'F.E.A.R.' but totally dugg 'Condemned.' A game putting you in the shoes of Special Agent Ethan Thomas believed to have lost his sanity and (in Bloodshot) become a threat and total drunken bum. What's so exciting about that? Well, the fact that you're going about playing CSI mixed with a little bit of Se7en. Use your tools to collect evidence in great detail and style to send back to the crime lab to have analyzed to seek out the real psycho. Depending on the choices you make during investigating crime scenes, is how the story will go. A classic game.

However, when Killzone was mentioned, to me it was just another First-Person Shooter. One of my best buddies had picked up let alone a PlayStation 3, but Killzone 2 as well. The fact he'd gotten a PlayStation 3 blew me away and that he was actually sitting down and playing Killzone 2 had to have said something. So I figured, what the hell, right? Played through it and wondered what the big deal was and what everyone was raving about? I'd even tried to pick up and play the original Killzone on PlayStation 2 and just couldn't stomach it and gave up. FPS games aren't for me. Then along comes a demo of Killzone 3. I still have a bad taste in my mouth from Killzone 2, but this one has something different about it. So I bit the bullet (no pun intended) once again and decided to face dive right in, and now, I understand it. Is Killzone 3 the definitive PlayStation 3 game? Absolutely not. But, it does show the power of the PlayStation 3 and what Sony Computer Entertainment can do with finding talent, just as Sega was able to do at the time Condemned was picked up. Killzone 3, to me, is a unique shooter.

STORY 
The story for Killzone 3 isn't anything new or special. It wasn't penned by a famed Hollywood writer that had written some Academy Award Nominee War film but, it still holds it own in its own way. It definitely seems the story and characters were patterned after people or personalities that you'd find during World War era's and I definitely got the feel that the Helghan were patterned after the Nazi-Party even down to the red and black colors and arm bands on their left arms. But, who in human history has had such an effect on human history? It makes for a good villain.

Killzone 3 takes place directly following Killzone 2. Templar has been killed, Sev and Rico have gotten Radec out of the way, or he's gotten himself out of the way. Sev, Rico and the ISA nearly had Scholar Visari but Rico goes crazy and murders him instead. Now both the Helghans, whose planet has been nuked by their own leaders, and the ISA that are in deep enough anyway having been stranded on Helghan without EVAC making matters worse. Great. Now a handful of ISA soldiers are sent out after a struggling Helghan defense board trying to gather weapons to hold off the ISA for a final strike to wipe out Earth and consume its resources. Unfortunately, the task at hand has been made difficult by incompetent leadership and things just keep getting worse.

Throughout my gameplay of Killzone 2 I actually found myself confused. I'd pitied the Helghan as is seemed like a civilization that just wanted to live things their own way and corrupted power-hungry leaders were just leading them like a lamb to the slaughter and that the human race were just stuck up. But, in Killzone 3, my mindset still was thrown around. The game jumps around a lot from event to event. Its not hard to follow unlike 'Inception' where if you blink, you're lost. But in once instance I was extremely confused and thought the story may not have been covered well, as reviews I'd read had stated, but on the contrary, it all gets covered, it makes sense, and though its not a deep story like Metal Gear Solid, its engaging.

 

Is there any humanity left in the Helghast? 

  
GRAPHICS 
You'll most often see a comparison between Xbox 360 exclusive 'Gears of War' compared to Killzone. I suppose many believe Killzone is the definitive engine of the PlayStation 3 and the Unreal Engine 3 is the definitive engine of the Xbox 360. Though I agree with the second part of that, Killzone isn't exactly what I would define as the best looking game on the PlayStation 3 though its still ranked up there. We have yet to see Gears of War 3 surface on the Xbox 360 to show off all the new things Epic have been working on to polish up the Unreal Engine 3, but from what I've seen in Killzone 3, the particle effects and attention to detail are phenomenal. Guerrilla, to me, can still produce a mind blowing explosion and a massive mushroom cloud with fire and smoke that leaves me question a firework going off even after the Hammer of Dawn has taken out the Locust's snarlingly vicious pet. The snow effects are stellar and the character models are great! The attention to detail of the mesh of the uniforms of both the ISA and Helghast. Facial detail was a little inconsistent though I felt at times looking great and other times looking 'meh.' Environments I felt were similar. The texture detail was great one minute and others it seemed bland and some things just seemed low res. The anti-aliasing of the Helghan fur coats bugged me a little bit considering Final Fantasy XIII eliminated it all with hair strands and the 360 struggled. I was left wondering what happened here. Some scene's even looked bizarre having what I can only describe as a 'gauzy' look. Like you're looking through a gauze filter. Weapon detail looks great though. I've always been the type that would rather see the detail of the character model in third-person, and designing a weapon without the need of a 360 degree camera has always felt cheap to me, but you're looking from a first-person perspective. Still, all that going on, explosions, Helghast over the screen with bullets whizzing by, ginourmous Helghast ships and mechs. It holds together well with a steady framerate with as much weight as it has. That cell is one tough mutha .Regardless, of its minor infermaties it looks great.

The attention to detail is "whoa"

SOUND 
There's not much to say. The game sounds great! No matter how I tried, I couldn't ever get myself to run the sound through television speakers and would delay my gameplay until daytime to use 5.1 surround. It supports DTS, which to me is a big deal. I didn't see an option to turn it on, like you would find in Uncharted 2's sound options, so I'm guessing if your receiver supports DTS, which most now-days do, you'll get that crystal clear DTS 5.1 surround. Whether its uncompressed DTS with the storage space of Blu-ray or not, I don't know but hearing bullets whiz by, explosions and feeling those explosions through your woofer is excellent! The voice acting is all very well done. There are a few sour spots that make you want to laugh, but the feel and emotion of the game is definitely upheld by it as well as the game soundtrack. An excellent musical score from start to finish brining out all the necessary emotions to be felt at the right given point.

GAMEPLAY 
Its really the gameplay that lured me into Killzone 3. It wasn't the games graphics as to this day, I still feel that Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, God of War III and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves define the PlayStation 3 and power of the Cell graphics processor, but again, Killzone 3 comes close. At first, Killzone 3 was just another FPS game. E3 came and went and Herman Hulst had announced KZ3 would support the PlayStation Move. I thought on it and still wasn't sold necessarily but intrigued. It gave the game a different feel, which was good, but who knew how the game would work or if it would work well. Then, sometime later, I saw a video of one of the developers playing with the move and later on with the newly announced Sharp Shooter. It seemed as if it felt so natural and seemed so intuitive and immersive that I couldn't take it anymore and said, I have to have this. I had gotten the game, but not the Sharp Shooter yet waiting for it to arrive. I decided to fire up the game to at least see how the final build of the game looked and had a good idea of the games feel using the Dualshock 3 from the demo, but was fearful of using the Move in the demo. Finally, the Sharp Shooter arrived. Don't get me wrong, when I started the game using the Sharp Shooter, I was fearful and it was something I really wasn't sure of and wondered what the trick was they'd been playing on me to sell this piece of plasic to me. But, as I played it and worked through the learning curve. I couldn't play the campaign any other way. Aiming, reloading and firing all felt great and felt new. I had to adjust the sensitivity and dead zone to get the right feel, but now its excellent! I don't think I'm ready to take everyone on in Multi-Player yet using the Sharp Shooter and Move, but in time it will come.

 Click Click Boom!

 
Sadly, I haven't been able to play the game in its other form using the stereoscopic 3D. What I have heard of it is positive. Guerrilla has learned from Call of Duty: Black Ops that too much depth is nauseating and have chosen to cut the depth and shallow it out a bit to make for a better gaming experience, and its seemed to work rather well.

Gameplay otherwise is exactly what you'd expect and nothing super innovative. What Guerrilla has managed to pull off well, is take the totally boring monotonous feel  of shooting one guy after another and the cheap boring thrill or just mowing guys down, and spiced it up with turret's, space ships, mechs, snow vehicles and tanks. The vehicular use has definitely been 1UP'd for sure. Points of the game where you feel stressed like you're just not going to have enough to pull through but you do are extremely gratifying. Even at points where you're sniping were great. I've never been much of a sniper, but it worked well and with the Move worked even better! The game felt easier than Killzone 2 with a lot less frustration. Perhaps it was the Move, when I got passed the learning curve, but it did feel easier.

 One heck of a ride action keeps rocking. Before you know it, its all over. Darn...

Bottom line is this. Its not the definitive game of the PlayStation 3, but Sony has definitely found themselves a great start to 2011 giving their loyal gamers an exclusive that can definitely hold its own to the competition. And Sony isn't stopping there. But, its definitely a FPS with some style taking all the new technology of the last year and changing the experience giving you something new and fresh. The games action kept me going until my arms were sore, but I still refused to put it down. When the game ended and the credits rolled, I couldn't believe it was over and wanted more. Its truly a unique, immersive, engrossing and intuitive experience that you can only know for yourself by trying for yourself. The demo on PSN is a pretty good representation of what you can expect and Guerilla games have again, given Sony a great start with a blockbuster title to begin the year out. Thus, I give this game a definite two THUMBS up.

OVERALL